Another story: During a recent early morning screening of The Three Musketeers (I know) at the Tinseltown Theater, a man with a Bluetooth earpiece blinking in his ear and a military-style haircut sat in front of me cracking and gobbling pistachios that he had smuggled into the theater with him. He really wolfed them down too, eating with wild abandon. People always eat with wild abandon in movie theaters, myself included. (Side note: The only time that I wish I had a third hand is when I eat popcorn. Well, there is one other time when I wish that I had a third hand, but I won’t be going into it here.) As this guy cracked and gobbled away, I seethed and seethed. I no longer watched the movie. Instead, I tried, in vain, to think up some stern but gentle words that I could whisper to him post shoulder-tap. “Sir, would you mind not cracking those pistachios so loudly?” “Excuse me, but could you eat your nuts a little more quietly?” Everything I came up with sounded plain ridiculous.

In the end, I did nothing. I glared and fumed and seethed at Dr. Pistachio, which is what I had dubbed the man (I imagined him as a small-time Batman villain for some reason), wishing with all my might that his pistachio-eating head would explode.

After the movie, the lights came up. Dr. Pistachio, when he rose from his seat, turned out to be far shorter than I expected him to be. And he had two teenaged boys with him–obviously his sons–who, by the number of eye rolls-per-second they delivered in his direction, no doubt gave Dr. Pistachio hell early and often in his days. In the darkness, the man was a nut-hoovering fiend who gleefully destroyed my movie-going experience; in the dark, he had become larger than life. But in the post-movie light, I realized that the man was simply a beleaguered dad wearing an old jacket with a hole in the sleeve who was out with his kids to see a free movie on a Saturday morning. Dr. Pistachio, if you’re out there reading this, I am sorry for seething and fuming at you that day.

My most memorable movie-going experience of this year happened in late March, on a brisk, clear morning. My colleague and movie-going partner Victor Lucas and I hustled over to the Park Theater on Cambie Street for a 10 a.m. screening of Insidious. Of the four venues we typically see movies in, the Park Theater is by far the oldest, creakiest, and most cavernous. It’s a throw-back theater that shows–how quaint–only one movie at a time. The Insidious screening was press-only, which meant that the movie was being shown inside this airplane hangar-sized theater to six shivering writers, Vic and me. Pro tip: If you attend an early-morning screening at The Park, wear an extra sweater. It’s cold in there.

This was also one of those rare screenings when I knew almost nothing about the movie I was about to see. This is the ideal way to see a movie. The less I know, the more surprise I get. All I knew was that Insidious was a horror movie, a genre which makes me prone to writing phrases like “laughably terrible” in my notebook. That’s not to say that I don’t like horror movies. I do like them. But the number of good horror movies out there, the ones that are not laughably terrible, the ones that give me, as I say, a “good creep,” can be counted on two hands (while my third, fictional hand busily shovels popcorn into my mouth).

So the lights went down inside the Park, the Bernard Hermann-like violin shrieks–WEET, WEET, WEET–began coming from the Park’s old, blown out speakers, and the word INSIDIOUS appeared on the screen in 11,000-point font. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!” I said, elbowing Vic who was shivering next to me and sipping his tea. “Look how laughably terrible this is!”

Then I stopped laughing and elbowing. And then I started quietly cursing at the screen, which is what I do whenever I experience a good creep. There is a five minute stretch of this movie that was so difficult for me to watch that I briefly considered leaving the theater altogether. No kidding. If you’re wondering what stretch I’m referring to, here’s a hint: It begins with a late-night knock at the front door. You’re right, the last act of Insidious goes to hell–in more ways than one–but the first two-thirds of the movie got under my skin, where it continues to reside to this day.

Getting under my skin is no small achievement. Of the 80 movies I saw in 2011, only about 10 managed to really get under my skin: Bridesmaids, Rango, Insidious, X-Men: First Class, Source Code, Hanna, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Drive, Moneyball, Real Steel, J. Edgar. OK, so that’s 11 movies. Of those 11, four would probably qualify as drop-everything-and-see-it events: Bridesmaids, Rango, Drive, and Hanna. And of those four, the only movie that I would whole-heartedly recommend, the only movie that doesn’t require any caveats or disclaimers from me, is Bridesmaids. Boy, did I ever enjoy that.

Did I nod off a few times? Oh, sure. Hey, you try and sit through Cowboys & Aliens, or Mars Needs Moms. But what surprises me most when I look back over this list is how little I experienced in the way of real feeling when I saw these damn things. There isn’t much in the way of bona fide escapism here. Nothing really moved me much, or captivated me. Hell, most of these movies barely held my attention. Most of these movies left me feeling empty and numb. They went into my eyes, and my ears, but they sure didn’t stay for long. Now that I think about it, maybe people are building those jacket caves and buzzing through bags of pistachios for a reason.

I’ve got a few more movies to see before I can wind down for the year: Mission: Impossible–Ghost Protocol, the new Sherlock Holmes, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Adventures of Tintin, David Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. So my work isn’t quite finished, not yet anyway. Sure, I’ll do it all again in 2012. I’ll spend another five or six of the ensuing 365 days sitting in the dark. Here’s hoping I feel more–much more–in the coming year.